PT BOAT PRESENTATION ART
POSTER, POSTER CALENDAR AND 28-Page WALL CALENDAR NOW AVAILABLE

Now Available:

There are four current projects featuring U.S. Navy PT Boats (officially classified as Motor Torpedo Boats). These boat consist of two boat types from ELCO (Electric Boat Company); a 77 foot and 80 foot series, next a boat from Higgins Industries boat; a 78 foot series boat, and lastly a boat from Huckins Yatch Works; a 78' series boat. Each of these company's boat went through design chages throughtout the war, resulting in multiple series within the same lenght classification.

The first project has been the ELCO 80' PT Boat - PT Series 103 - 196. This project included a cut-a-way drawing and Interior/Exterior drawings, drawn in isometric projection and illustrated as detailed in standard factory blueprints. However, many times photographs had to be used when drawings were no loger available. These drawings like the ELCO 77 foot boat was started as early 1996, with the ELCO 80 foot artwork finalized in 2007. This time span wasn't due to complexity but rather due to a lack of information and/or available work time. Other series boats will be developed including PT 374 of PT Series 372 - 383, PT Series 314 - 367,and PT Series 565 - 624.

The second project has been the ELCO 77' PT Boat - PT Series 20 - 68. This project has been put on hold, waiting for further information, which is extremely difficult to come by. History and time has taken it's toll on available engineering drawings for all of the PT boats.

The third project is the Higgins 78' PT Boat - Developing two series at the same time PT Series 197 - 254 and PT Series 625 - 660. This project includes a cut-a-way drawings and Interior/Exterior drawings, as like all other drawings drawn in isometric projection and illustrated as detailed in standard factory blueprints. However this project also relies on photographs to be used when drawings are no loger available. These drawing have been completed but not yet published to the public - these will be released very soon, possibily at the first of the year 2009.

The fourth PT project is the Huckins 78' PT Boat - This project has proven to be very difficult to start because of the lack of availble engeering drawings, except for some for some protype drawings never used. Some further investigation is going to be needed before I put the nix to this project.

All of the drawing as well as many others are drawn by hand in the old standard technical manual illustrating method with 30/60/90 degree triangles, t-square and proportional dividers along with lots of erasers - I'm unfortunately not CAD literate.


The image below show my computer work station displaying the earlier ELCO product drawings, PT Poster, Poster Calendar and Wall Calendar. Please note the items may appear small, but both the Mac and PC monitors are large 24" LCD's:

A short history and explanation of the PT boat drawing projects. Below are is a early pencil drawing (as well as a few other projects) as I began plotting and drawing the boat. The drawing size was roughly 48" x 36" and drawn on vellum, first plotting with light blue (non-repro) pencil lead then later as images were composed, darken with H2 pencil lead. Drawing elements were drawn with the use of a proportional divider to transfer scale from two-dimensional blueprint drawings and transferring the scale to 30/90/30 degree projection (isometric) with standard drafting triangles to drafting vellum. After the plotting and construction from as many ELCO blueprints I could muster-up and in many instances examine photos published in several books, the pencil layout drawing was complete. From this point the completed vellum drawings were cut into many section small enough to fit on to my scanner and scan into my Macintosh as hi-resolution black and white bit images (600 dpi PICT files). After all images were store onto the computer, I open each image file into PhotoShop and reassembled the entire 48"x36" line drawings and saved this drawing as a hi-resolution worker file. With the drawing data now digital, I opened the files into Adobe Illustrator as a grayed template and began to trace the entire drawing in black (Bezier Curves**) lines. After the line work was completed certain areas were made into flat planes where colors could be added to the drawing. Although the actual interiors appear to be white and some wood tones. I used slight yellowing colors to keep the room and interior components definition clearer. The interior is so busy that an all white color would make the layout somewhat confusing and very busy for the untrained eye. The drawing used were ELCO engineering drawings purchased from PT Boats, Inc. All photo references were from published photos typically found in Victor Chin's and Frank D. Johnson's books and what limited images that could be found on the internet back in 1998-2000. The main isometric finished drawing took approximately 230 hours to complete, with an additional hundred hours for the support drawings shown in the 28-page calendar. Some of drawings below are for other drawing projects such as the ELCO 78' PT-41, the Higgins boats and Huckins boats. These are all projects currently in work (actual over a period from 1997 through current time.) .

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